Playing Martin Luther King Jr. would be a challenge for any actor, but for Paul Winfield (Sounder, Hustle) it is something more: the repayment of a debt. "If not for Martin," he says, "I doubt I would have been able to make a success of acting. He raised black people's aspirations and changed white folks' opinions." Winfield co-stars with Cicely Tyson (as Coretta) and Ossie Davis (as Martin Luther King Sr.) in NBC'S two-part special on King scheduled to air Nov. 6 and 7. Although the 1965 Selma civil rights march, led by King, took place in Alabama, the cast and 300 extras were restaging it in southern Georgia last week. Earlier, to get more insight into the man whose role he was playing, Winfield had sought the advice of Martin Luther King Sr. Recalls Winfield wryly: "Daddy said to me, 'There was only one Martin.' End of conversation." . Washington's best-known bookworm has stacks of new reading for the supper table. First Child Amy Carter, 9, is taking a special four-day-a-week "enrichment program" at George Washington University's reading center this summer. Amy, who starts the fifth grade in September, and a dozen or so other fourth-through sixth-graders will read and compile handbooks on the subject of transportation. They will also take field trips to Washington's Air and Space Museum, ride the Metro and travel down the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal on a mule-drawn barge. What were Amy's qualifications to join the highly selective group? Well, for one thing, the directors felt that she showed a strong potential for leadership.

That haunting, half-familiar figure with the rifle is not Lee Harvey Oswald, but Actor John Pleshette, filming an ABC-TV movie about him. The film shows Oswald's years in Russia and his life with Marina, but switches in a key spot to fiction. The script eliminates Jack Ruby and his fatal shot from history, leaving Oswald alive to go on trial--Eichmann-like--in a glass box. The verdict on his guilt is being kept secret from Ben Gazzara, who plays the ambitious prosecuting attorney, and Lorne Greene, the defense attorney. Nor does Pleshette yet know the fate of the character he is playing. But after reading and talking endlessly about Oswald, Pleshette concludes that he was "a mystery man, as much a victim as a villain."

Actress June Gable climbed the ladder, drew herself up to her full 5 ft. and zinged a one-liner at 7-ft. 2-in. Los Angeles Laker Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: "Want to see my touchdown?" As it happened, the script of NBC-TV's Laugh-In revival called for "Want to see my sky hook?" But nobody called personal foul. Gable's gaffe is now part of the Sept. 12 show. Kareem, too, scores his share of points as a guest artist on the first of six monthly specials. When a crew member started chatting about antique rugs during filming one day, Kareem, 30, showed off his rebounding skills with a quick, "Oh, yes. I'm very interested in antique rugs. I sold Howard Cosell his first one."

When he is not doing spadework for Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale does some cultivating at home, donning his blue jeans after dinner and helping his wife Joan tend the family garden. In a 50 ft. by 100 ft. plot near the comfortable vice-presidential mansion on Observatory Hill, the Mondales, with substantial help from a college student who lives with them, grow cabbage, beans, zucchini, pumpkins--just about everything for their dinner table, in fact, but peanuts. "This is a completely organic garden," explained Joan. "We don't even spray the beetles." A scarecrow decked out in Son Teddy's pants and motorcycle helmet protects the crops. "Most scarecrows don't do much good, but this one has kept the crows away. I think it's the helmet," mused Mondale. Proudly looking around his garden, he added, "We did it all without any subsidy from Bob Bergland."

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